


he lives inside me every day of my life

by dancinbutterfly, suzukiblu



Series: mad elephants [7]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Family, Fantasy Gender Roles, Gen, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Omega Jesse McCree, Original Character(s), Team as Family, Young Jesse McCree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-06-30 10:58:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19851730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly, https://archiveofourown.org/users/suzukiblu/pseuds/suzukiblu
Summary: It’s lunchtime and Ana’s in the cafeteria, eating in-between mission reports. She’s absorbed, but not too absorbed to notice someone heading her way. She glances up, expecting Jack or Gabe, and finds . . .Well, in a sense she’s right, she supposes. Half-right, at least.





	he lives inside me every day of my life

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first one we actually wrote together as opposed to writing _at_ each other, haha.

It’s lunchtime and Ana’s in the cafeteria, eating in-between mission reports. She’s absorbed, but not too absorbed to notice someone heading her way. She glances up, expecting Jack or Gabe, and finds . . . 

Well, in a sense she’s right, she supposes. Half-right, at least. 

“Mind if I sit?” Jesse says, gesturing at the opposite side of the table with his lunch tray. She’s never actually seen him eating in here before, but it _has_ only been a couple of weeks. Or perhaps he’s just finally settling in. She is a little surprised he’d want to sit with her, especially after she tranqed him, but then again it’s not as if he knows many people on base. 

“Please do,” she says, adjusting her mission reports to make sure they’re all on one side of the table. Jesse sits down across from her in a very teenaged sprawl, then seems to catch himself and straightens up a bit. He’s wearing an Overwatch-issue T-shirt and sweats and sneakers, no hat or leathers, and if it weren’t for the ankle monitor he’d look like any new cadet. He even has an ID badge now, though she wonders what name is on it. He certainly doesn’t look like the Jesse Reyes she met those scant few times back in the day. 

“Thank you kindly,” he says, with easy politeness. 

He also doesn’t look very much like the Jesse McCree she was chasing through the vents, if she’s thinking about it. 

“Of course,” she says, taking a sip of her tea and waiting to see if he has anything to say. He doesn’t speak, so she does. “How are you liking the base?” 

“One of the more luxurious places I been locked up,” he says, a briefly wry expression flickering across his face. 

“Not the most?” she asks. 

“I’ve lived an eventful life, ma’am,” he says. She chuckles quietly, taking another sip of tea. He’s a charming young man, but he certainly wants something. She can’t imagine why else he’d seek her out. Jack had said he’d gone to see them willingly the other day, brief though it had been, so presumably he isn’t coming to her to ask for anything he could ask them for. 

“You certainly have,” she says, and, because it’s polite to mention it—“I’ve read your file.” 

“Well, that’s what the thing’s for,” he says. “I imagine it’s gotten a lot of attention lately.” 

“Less than you’d think,” she says. Gabriel still hadn’t read it, last she knew, and Jack only made it about halfway through before he got too upset to finish it. Perhaps he has by now, but she expects she’d have heard about it if so. “But certainly some. Have you seen Jack and Gabriel today?” 

“No, ma’am,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re a friend of theirs, right?” 

“Yes. And they’re mine. Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering,” he says with a shrug. “I don’t rightly know who’s friendly with who ‘round here. Or much at all about ‘round here, aside from how most of you were in the war and all.” 

“Overwatch might have its faults, but we do our best to do more than work together.” She folds her hands on the table and studies him, hoping that what she says next is what he wants from her. “We’re more of a family than anything, whether we were in the war or not. But to answer the question you’re not asking, yes, I was in the Omnic Wars. That’s how I met Jack and Gabriel.”

“I figured,” Jesse says, tilting his head. “So you’ve known ‘em a real long time, then.” 

“Over fifteen years,” Ana agrees, with a nod. 

“So you knew me too,” Jesse says, his voice a little slower; maybe a little more careful. “Well, I guess you did say I’d grown, didn’t you.” 

“I did,” Ana agrees, and smiles. She doesn’t even try to stop herself. Gabriel’s family always opened their home to anyone who needed a place to go. When she was younger, she had needed a place to rest and Jesse had been there. He had been such a happy child, high energy and high enthusiasm, full of curiosity and often in need of discipline. Her time with him had changed her mind about children and now she had Fareeha. 

She is letting her daughter do things she doesn’t want for her, violent things, because she still remembers how Jesse had no way to help himself. She was scarred second-hand by Jack and Gabriel losing the boy who sits before her now and she will let her child make her own choices no matter how much she dislikes them, if that’s the cost of avoiding that fate. 

“You are significantly taller than the toddler who liked to wake me by pulling on my nose.”

“Well I’ve had a couple growth spurts since then,” Jesse says with a shrug. He looks . . . searching, perhaps? Or as if he’s looking for the place to start searching from. She wonders what he wants to know. “You SEP too?” 

“Every nation committed their own crimes to stop the omnic threat but mine didn’t attempt to rewrite the inner workings of the human body.” She tries very hard to keep all judgment out of her voice when she says this. “The SEP was a specifically American undertaking. That isn’t to say other countries and their citizens wouldn’t have done it, you understand. We would have even given the costs. And they were cataclysmically high for most of the volunteers. The Security Council and Joint Chiefs just weren’t interested in sharing proprietary information even as the world ended.” 

"Can't say as I know anything 'bout all that," Jesse says, leaning back in his seat and making a gesture as if to tip his hat back before remembering he isn't wearing it. He hasn't touched his food. "Sounds a mite unfortunate, but it seems to have worked out alright for Reyes and Morrison, at least." 

“Not really.”

"You'd know better, ma'am, but last I checked they were war heroes," Jesse says wryly. "Sounds like it worked out alright to me." 

“They had an Omega child who was born a single instead of having the litter support a dynamic person is due because of the damage the program did to their reproductive systems, were deployed during a significant portion of their lives when they’d rather have been home raising their family but were not allowed because no one else could do what they could thanks to the SEP, and have never had time to truly grieve their loss when their son died for the same reason.” She shrugs in a mimic of Jesse’s earlier gesture. “Neither of them chose to be war heroes and they didn’t stay in Overwatch because it’s a twenty-four hour party. They both had a cause to fight for and a wrong to right. I would imagine they still do.”

"Right," Jesse says, his mouth twisting briefly before smoothing out again. He looks like there's something else he wants to say, but either he can't figure out how to phrase it or he's holding his tongue. "Sounds a bit miserable, when you put it that way." 

“You have a talent for understatement. I wonder where you get it from.”

“Wouldn’t know,” Jesse says wryly, pushing his hands into his pockets and leaning forward a bit, not quite close enough to encroach on her personal space. She assumes he wants to say something a little more secretive, though he doesn’t pitch his voice any lower. “I mean, could be worse, there could be a whole litter of me. Can’t imagine they’d like that much better.” 

He smiles as he says it, like he’s telling a joke. Ana remembers how _young_ he is. 

Of the two of them, she might be the adult but she’s also the sniper. She doesn’t miss. So she gives him a steady look and says, “You remind me of your mother more every time you open your mouth. I believe you’re exactly what they want just as you are.”

Jesse laughs. It’s not exactly a _nice_ laugh, but it isn’t nasty either. It’s difficult to put her finger on the difference. 

“Awful thoughtful of you to say, I suppose, but I really don’t think so, ma’am,” he says, picking up his untouched tray as he gets back to his feet. The grin he gives her is crooked, but seems authentic. She has trouble seeing how it could be. “Pardon me, though, but I gotta be going. Thank you kindly for the company.” 

Ana is messaging the boys a debrief of the conversation before Jesse is out of the cafeteria. She doesn’t know where he’s going or what he’s taken from all this, but forewarned is forearmed is an eternal truth and they need all the help they can get with this boy. They always have. 

.

.

.

Reinhardt and Torbjorn are in the gym and between sets when Jack and Gabriel’s son walks in. He’s wearing Overwatch sweatpants and a T-shirt and looking comfortable in them, so hopefully he’s settling in. Reinhardt hasn’t seen him in the gym before, at least. Jesse looks around, then sees them and heads over. Reinhardt straightens up attentively; Torbjorn gets a familiar look on his face, no doubt already debating asking the kid how he took out so many of his turrets at once. 

The boy walks up to them and smiles, and it’s an easy expression. Reinhardt wouldn’t have expected it, from the problems Jack’s mentioned them having with him. Then again, they aren’t Jack or Gabe—it might be easier for the boy to be friendly with true strangers. 

“Hey,” Jesse says. “Don’t mind me none, just looking around a bit. You’re friends of Reyes and Morrison, right?” 

“That’s right,” Reinhardt says. “Are you looking for a spotter?” Jesse laughs, holding his hands up. He has a tattoo of Deadlock’s tag on his left arm; it’s at least a year or two old. Reinhardt wonders how long he was with them. Jack didn’t say. 

“Not me,” Jesse says. “I ain’t the gym type. You were in the Omnic Wars with ‘em?” 

“Along with quite a few other people,” Torbjorn grunts. 

“You knew me?” Jesse asks. 

“No, we never had the chance,” Reinhardt says regretfully, thinking back to that time. It’d been so hard to get leave, during that part of the war. Certainly when they’d had it they’d spent it with Torbjorn’s family. “We saw pictures a few times. You were a very cute pup!” 

“Thanks,” Jesse says, his mouth quirking oddly for a moment. “So you both been with Overwatch a while, then.” 

“Only your parents and Amari have been with the watch longer than we have,” Torbjorn says proudly. 

Reinhardt barely stops himself from smacking him. He is going to make Torbjorn run so far and so long he falls over. He really is, the idiot. 

“Yeah, that’s definitely a while,” Jesse says, seemingly unbothered. Reinhardt has a hard time believing he’s come around on that particular subject so quickly, though. “So you like it here? Like, working here. Seems kinda intense.” 

“Who would want to be bored?” Torbjorn asks, sounding genuinely confused and a little worried by the prospect of a less exciting, safer existence. 

Reinhardt smothers a grin. “Yes, I find that’s part of the charm. Why’d you ask, pup?”

Jesse cocks his head a little at the “pup”, like he’s puzzled by it, but just shrugs in response. “Just wondering,” he says. “Seems like a lot of people’ve been here a long time. And, you know, I’m apparently gonna be here a while myself.” 

“It’s important, what we do here. Work didn’t end when the ceasefire was called.” He folds his arms and meets the boy’s eyes. They’re a familiar brown and just as shrewd as the commander he inherited them from’s. “Still a lot of cleanup and rebuilding to do even now.”

“That’s what you’re doing?” Jesse asks skeptically. “Ain’t you all done enough?” 

Reinhardt looks at his friend and they both shrug at each other, then at Jesse. They do good work. They help people. They build things. They stop bad things from getting worse. If the boy can’t see it, well, he’s not their pup. 

“Okay,” Jesse says, wrinkling his nose briefly. His face smooths out again almost immediately, only to just as immediately shift into a frown, and he cocks his head again. He looks like he’s thinking something over, or maybe he’s just not sure what to say either. “Morrison and Reyes really run this place that good?” 

“They’ve put their lives into Overwatch. Besides each other, it has been everything to them since—“

Reinhardt coughs in warning. This isn’t their place. They don’t have the right to air that wound. 

“Since the war.” 

“Right.” Jesse looks around the gym, frown deepening uncomfortably for a moment. “Does everybody get the tests?” 

“If new recruits don’t have them beforehand it’s fairly SOP,” Reinhardt says. “Sometimes people have come from a special circumstance or an established career and they’re not exactly necessary, but mostly yes. Operatives often have untapped potential and it’s important to know what areas need to be honed. Why do you ask?”

“I dunno.” Jesse shrugs, tucking his hands into his pockets. “Wondered what the point was. Nobody explained, they just said I tested in SEP percentiles. I ain’t exactly a recruit, though.” 

“You look like a recruit.”

“I suspect the ankle monitor ain’t SOP,” Jesse says. “But I suppose I do, otherwise. In my defense, didn’t really have time to pack before my arrest.” 

“They never do,” Reinhardt laughs. 

“If you say so.” Jesse cocks his head again, then looks towards the door. He isn’t quite frowning anymore, but he looks very close to it for a moment before looking back to them with a pleasant smile. “Pardon me, but I oughta be moving on. Thank you kindly for your time.” 

They watch him go until the doors shut behind him. 

“He’s got his father’s way with words, doesn’t he?” Torbjorn muses on a long exhale. 

“He certainly has his mother’s mercurial mood. God help us all.”

.

.

.

Marcus Koertzberg-Affondi wouldn’t have recognized the returned Reyes pup if Rose hadn’t pointed him out. They’d been in Reserve housing for all of an hour when his A caught him by the scruff and tugged him in. He’d been ready to fold at her feet, looking forward to the beast she turned into during the off hours of bimonthly tour when they left the kids with her parents for a week and got back to the business of soldiering for Overwatch. Instead she pulled him back into her chest so she could hiss her news in his ear about the cadet across the hall.

"K-Bar, look sharp. The Reyes pup's on your four o'clock." 

When they're active duty with Overwatch, he's always K-Bar, never Marcus and rarely Omega to Rose even though they've been mated for as long as Commander Reyes's pup had been alive and legally married since they moved to Numbani after the war ended ten years ago. That's okay though. Rose is always his Master Chief and it's nice to go back to having it be official sometimes. 

He wouldn’t have thought to notice the kid otherwise even if he was Chava’s age and vaguely reminiscent of Commander’s coloring and Cornflake’s square jaw. But if Rose said it, well, his Master Chief never let him down so far and they were racing towards twenty years. He wasn’t going to start doubting her now. And once she's pointed him out, yeah, he does have an ankle monitor on.

The pup’s brushed past them a few times between shifts but nothing worth noting. There’s nothing to say anyway so they stick to the common room or their quarters and don’t seek him out. 

That lasts until the pup comes up to them himself in the common room and says, “You’re friends of Reyes and Morrison’s, right?” 

K-Bar gapes at the kid from his spot, draped across a couch with his head on his mate’s lap like he’s twenty-something, not forty-something. He has to make himself focus but Rose doesn’t miss a beat. 

“Troops, teammates, friends, family. All the same. What can we do for family?” she says smoothly, but she also doesn’t stop petting his hair and he is gonna be the best O for her later, fuck. 

The pup—Jesse—gets a funny look on his face and hides his hands in his pockets. His expression clears pretty quick, though. 

“Somebody said you were SEP,” he says. “And that you had a kid.” 

“Two,” K-Bar says, reaching up to clutch Rose’s wrist. “We have two. They’re sixteen and eleven.” Shira had nearly killed him but she was worth it. Both his girls were so worth it. 

God, he feels so selfish and so ugly but he’s so fucking grateful it’s not one of them standing where Jesse is now because it could have so easily been different if there had been an attack in Baltimore instead of San Bernardino. He and Rose had left their children with family while deployed too. This could have been Chava. 

“What’s Reyes talking about with SEP kids doing weird shit?” Jesse asks, frowning faintly. 

“They’re gifted. My youngest can . . . let’s say sprint. And my eldest is quite the heavyweight.”

K-Bar snorts at Rose’s painful understatement. Shira could keep up with a sports car for almost a mile last time they checked and one of Chava’s tantrums had once brought down a non-load-bearing wall from how hard she’d slammed the door and punched the frame. They were still finding dust from those renovations years later. Both his girls are also monsters when it comes getting out of tight places and pretty much any tactical thinking. There are agents on base who can’t manage the shenanigans they’ve pulled, separately and together, and hide and seek are dirty words in their home. Fucking _gifted_ his ass. 

“Okay, MC, and Batman has a little money.”

“Hm.” Jesse keeps frowning. “And there ain’t nothing wrong with ‘em?”

Rose’s hand stills in his hair and K-Bar holds his breath as her thighs tense under his head. “Young man, now you’re asking personal, medical questions about my children. I know what you think you’re doing and why but it is unacceptable and I don’t care who you are or were. This isn’t how an honorable person conducts themselves so you have one chance to explain yourself and try again the right way before proceeding to buy yourself a motherfucking world of hurt. Am I making myself understood?”

_“Honorable,”_ Jesse says under his breath, tone not quite incredulous but definitely baffled. He says the word like he’s never heard it in his life. “I’m sorry. I ain’t trying to pry, sir. There’s shit wrong with me, I just wanted to know if it was _just_ me.” 

“Then you should have asked that. That’s a different question altogether, isn’t it?” Rose asks, with about eighty percent less bite. “I don’t know what your specific issues are and I’m not going to disclose our children’s medical histories to you but it’s not just you. There’s one SEP family and I can tell you that all of you have had difficulties. It varies from child to child but there’s something.”

“You’ll probably meet the girls at some point,” K-Bar offers. They both come to the base at least once a year for aptitude testing and to show off what they can do somewhere it will be appreciated. The medical care in Overwatch is the best on Earth so they all get checked out here as well. Shira’s eyesight has been almost restored to almost 20/20 vision by surgeries pioneered here. All she needs is reading glasses when she was legally blind at birth. Chava had a harder and easier time in different ways, mostly internal, kidney and liver problems plaguing almost everything she ate and drank. The new doctor the Cornflake brought on says she’s got some ideas but no one in the Affondi house is too optimistic on that one. 

“All due respect, I ain’t exactly the type you should be letting your kids meet, ma’am,” Jesse says like he’s reminding them of something, tapping the foot with the ankle monitor on it against the floor meaningfully. Presumably he actually thinks he’s reminding them. His expression is just thoughtful, though. “Hn. So it is the SEP shit, then. I was wondering.” 

K-Bar sits up and looks at Rose. They’ve had a lot of talks with the girls about this and they have each other. Jesse Reyes has had no one. If he’s anything like the Commander, he probably hasn’t tried to talk directly to his parents. That’s more Cornflake territory and if he were anything like his father he wouldn’t be talking to them. He quirks an eyebrow at Rose like he used to, back when the questions were about maneuvers, not teenagers, and she nods in approval. That’s good enough go-ahead for him and always has been. 

“We needed everything we could get against the omnics but none of you kids consented for what we did to ourselves affecting you. We’re sorry for that. I know your parents are too but I also know they’re not sorry about having you.”

“Definitely not,” Rose agrees and after all this time, he still gets a silly thrill when his Master Chief backs his play. Doesn’t matter that she’s his A. It’s the same as when he was young and thirsty. 

Seriously it’s a good thing that she married him or he’d be TV show lead screwed. Only now he can think clearly through the feeling. It doesn’t slow him down. 

“You were their world. They didn’t ever really come back from your death.” That’s the truth too. His teammates, his leader, they died with this boy. The men who took their place were good but they were different people than the ones he and Rose went through SEP with. He never saw those guys again after the Chicago mission. 

“Seems like a strange thing to be sorry for. Ain’t like I’d be around if it weren’t for SEP anyway,” Jesse says, an odd look flickering across his face and a restlessness passing through him as he folds his arms. He glances towards the hall, but doesn’t leave. “Ain’t that how Reyes and Morrison met?” 

K-Bar nods. He’d been scooped out of AIT thanks to his genetic screening. He’d been so green that some of the guys in his round had called him Frog until they all died off and there was no one left to remember the nickname but the scientists and doctors. He doesn’t like to think about that. For him his career really started when he survived long enough to join the actual unit, the one that had the other survivors, and that was where Morrison and Reyes were and they already knew each other. 

Rose shakes her head because that was her story. She was one of them. 

“I was Reyes’ NCO before they started recruiting for the SEP. Morrison and I were both part of a group of about half a dozen of us that followed him in. You don’t leave a good CO if you have a choice. An officer with half a brain’s almost impossible to find and when you do, you hang on until the wheels come off.”

“Oh,” Jesse says, frowning faintly and looking towards the hall for a moment again. If there’s something interesting in there, it’s not an obvious something. “I didn’t know that.” 

“Amazing what happens when you ask an actual question there, young man.” Rose says in her Master Chief voice, which is part alpha voice, part drill sergeant, part parent, part teacher, and part “don’t disappoint me because I believe in you”. It’s insanely effective and makes K-Bar rock hard and dripping wet pretty much every time. His life as a grunt was so hard. 

“Well, I gotta lot of questions lately, sir, and there’s only so much time in the day,” Jesse says, flashing her a wry smile. “Gotta pick and choose a bit or we’d be here all night.” 

“We can spare a night. And the people who can give the answers have wanted to make time your whole life.”

"I suppose," Jesse says, smile briefly turning wan. "I wouldn't wanna trouble anybody none, though. Reyes really that good a CO?" 

There’s been other COs. Idiots who were playing war with their lives. Reyes always put himself on the line with them, asked for nothing he wouldn’t give. He made himself available and never faltered under pressure and listened to his men when they needed him. And for K-Bar at least he was a fellow O to learn from and look up to. Rose and Reyes were closer than he was, but he'd trusted the man with his life and his fears then and he trusted him now. That’s hard to explain even to family and he’s never been great with words. “He led us into hell and back out,” he offers, hoping that’s enough to explain it. 

“The world as we know is still here, isn’t it?” Rose asks. When Jesse’s eyes widen she nods. “That’s him and Morrison commanding Overwatch.”

"Suppose it would be," Jesse says. He shifts his weight, restless again, but still doesn't go anywhere. "They're really like that, then? Like everybody says?" 

The look in his eyes is painful to see. It’s close to his girls, to the way they look on calls the times he and Rose have been recalled for emergencies and don’t know when they’ll be home. Or if. 

He’s a mother. It hurts to see a child look like that, to know he’s never known anything else. And probably what he’s asking has nothing to do with command or the military or anything else that Overwatch can or will provide. 

So he goes with the answer that’s kind but also true. He says what he hopes someone would say about him if it were Chava and Shira asking.

“They’re good people, they’re human, and they love you more than life itself. Listen, please.” He holds out a hand. The kid doesn’t move. He just stares and K-Bar feels his confidence flag until his Master Chief’s, his _Alpha’s_ hand lands on his back. Her power makes him brave, like always. “I remember the day you were born, okay, and the day they lost you. They stepped up when they needed to and they delivered, but you always came first.” 

“Wasn’t quite what I was asking,” Jesse says uncomfortably, something raw flickering through his expression before he erases it and it’s replaced with an amicable neutrality. Something about it’s not that different from the look he had in his eyes before, though. He takes a step back, inclining his head, and says, “But I gotta be going. Thank you kindly for your time, ma’am, sir. I appreciate it.” 

“Have you talked to de la Cruz yet?” Rose asks, sliding her hand up to grip the back of K-Bar’s neck. “He’s in guest quarters.”

“I don’t know who that is,” Jesse says. “So probably not. Guest quarters?” 

She laughs. “Oh man, you can’t miss him. He’s the only gangbanger on base.”

“Cornflake actually gets jealous when he’s around.” 

Watching Morrison struggle not to be a knothead asshole around Nicky is one of the best things and was one of the favorite R&R pastimes for the SEP battalion. It’s also one of the most awkward things he’s ever fucking seen. He’s a disaster and a failure and is really only fooling himself. 

“Which is priceless all on its own. Like the Commander would ever even consider that assclown of an A.”

“You mean Uncle Nicky?” Jesse asks, looking bemused. “Morrison’s _jealous_ of him?” 

He’s calling Gabe and Jack Reyes and Morrison but the gangbanger he said he didn’t know is Uncle Nicky. Oy, this kid’s heart is in pieces. 

Rose has chosen to ignore it. “Not that he’d ever admit to, but he knew your mom first so Morrison goes quietly nuts over the way they mindmeld.” 

“Yeah?”

“They grew up together. They’re practically littermates but tell that to him.” 

“Huh,” Jesse says, frowning faintly. “Suppose that explains some things. I was wondering who the hell he was to ‘em.” 

That’s already been answered but K-Bar feels like it bears repeating. “Family.”

“Where’s the guest quarters?” Jesse asks. “I can’t hardly tell the difference between the rooms ‘round here.” 

Rose lays it out for him in careful specificities that are clear as a GPS. K-Bar has always been able to see her coordinates in his head. 

“Thank you kindly,” Jesse says with a nod, and heads for the hall. “I appreciate the assistance.” 

It’s not his imagination that they both exhale when the pup leaves the common room. He doesn’t know that he’s been that tense outside of combat or childbirth in his whole fucking life. Rose tugs him against her side and he goes easily. He feels safe under her chin. 

“Can we go back to the bunk and call the girls, Alpha?”

“Great minds, baby. Great fucking minds.”

.

.

.

Somebody knocks on the door of his temporary room, and Nicky pauses right before taking the swallow of tequila he was planning on. It isn’t Gabí, he’d just have walked in, and it’s not Jack’s knock. Besides, they’re supposed to be in some meeting or something, doing whatever it is the free world needs done this time. He has no idea who else on base would be at his door, though. 

He heads over tequila and all and opens the door, because he’s not finding out otherwise, and finds Jesse standing on the other side looking for all the world like an Overwatch cadet, if you ignore the ankle monitor and the obvious signs of stress. He probably should’ve guessed, in retrospect. 

“Please tell me I can have some of that,” Jesse says. 

That is Not Happening on any planet but especially not this one, in spitting distance of Gabriel fucking Reyes. He wants to keep breathing, thanks. 

“Your mama would literally kill me, Jessito.” He swings the door wide and grins at his favorite nephew who isn’t actually his nephew. “Get in here, kiddo. I got pizza somewhere."

"Thank you for your hospitality," Jesse says as he steps into the room, sparing him a lazy smile before his expression turns dry. "Ya'll are aware I ain't a pup no more, right?" 

“Mijo, you may not be a kid but you ain’t legal neither and I like all my limbs attached, comprenden? Pero no tequila para ti until you’re twenty-one.”

“Drinking age most places Overwatch serves is eighteen,” Jesse protests. 

Nicky clicks his tongue the way Alé taught them. “Well, you gonna need to get your shit on your own ‘cuz I love you but I fear him.” 

He always had a healthy dose of caution when it came to Gabí but it wasn’t really fear when Jesse was “alive”. ‘Course, he never saw what his homeboy could really do until after the little man was gone, when the omnics were right up on their doorstep, but he never fucking forgot the sight of them, like real life goddamn superheroes, going all Captain America on those boltbuckets. They was vengeance made life, Gabí espesicialmente, and Nicky’s in no hurry to be in that position. 

“I cannot even remember the last time I had to care about the damn drinking age,” Jesse muses, like it’s a novelty. A novelty he’s annoyed by, but a novelty all the same. “Reyes and Morrison were on my ass about fucking _smoking_ , even. Is this gonna be a thing?”

“Oh definitely.” 

“Oh boy,” Jesse mutters. “Fine, but I’m holding you to the promise of pizza, old man. I’m damn near starving.” 

“Still like it cold with pepperoni or did joining Deadlock give you fancy taste?” 

“Well, I think I can get by without the caviar just this once,” Jesse drawls, dropping into the nearest chair and hooking an arm over the back of it. “Won’t even hold it against you, since I dropped by without notice and all.” 

Nicky bows. “So generous.” He grabs the leftovers from the night before and pulls them out of the small refrigerator standard to guest quarters. Thank god the pup’s tastes haven’t changed too much and he hasn’t turned into a picky brat like his litters. He’s got soda for him and hopefully it’s not flat. 

Once he’s settled across from Jesse he waits until his godson is eating, shoveling food in his face with a savagery that would make Rafi’s skin crawl. He doesn’t know all the shit their boy lost when the Reyes lost him but he’s starting to get a glimpse and it’s making him sick. 

He takes a sip of his drink—not that this bargain tequila is for sipping, shit—and cuts the bullshit. “What can I do for you, niño?” 

“Mmph.” Jesse swallows the cheek-bulging bite of pizza in his mouth, then shrugs loosely, glancing not _quite_ at his face, but almost close enough to pass. “Dunno,” he says. “Guess I had some questions. If you got the time, and all.” 

“Course I got time. Seeing you’s why I hauled out to this nowhere shithole in the first place.” Well that and trying to cut the barely restrained breakdown imminent in Gabriel’s call off at the goddamn pass to basically no avail. Can’t win them all. “Hit me.” 

“They said you grew up with Reyes, right?” Jesse says, leaning in a bit and folding his arms on the table. “He always this intense?” 

“His baby just rose from the dead after fifteen years. Esse’s at eleven trying to be a four when normally he’s a steady eight or a nine.” 

“So yes,” Jesse says, drumming his fingers on the table restlessly. “If that man’s ever been at a genuine four in his _life_ , I might just die of shock.” 

“Oh, Jack’s got him down that far a couple times. I’ve seen it.” He doesn’t say that those times were mostly Before, but there’s been a few since. When the treaty was signed and the boys came home for their first real vacation comes to mind. 

He knows as well as anyone who knows them at all that those times weren’t often, but they happened. Gabí and his A held together, found something together that was calm and happy even if it was broke. It’s been enough. 

“It’s nice.” 

But with their pup resurrected there’s a chance for something better now. Everyone is holding their breath on it. 

“Seems like Morrison’s got a knack for talking people down,” Jesse says, then picks up another slice of pizza and studies it briefly before cramming just about the whole damn thing in his mouth, possibly to stop himself from elaborating. 

“He can be a smooth motherfucker for such an awkward dork, that’s for sure.”

“Mmph.” Jesse swallows the last bite of crust and wipes the back of his hand across his mouth, frowning to himself. “He’s a lot calmer about all this than Reyes.” 

“You can’t judge them on the same scale. Your mama’s got zero chill. Your papi is a different kinda person altogether. It’s why they work.”

“Seems logical enough,” Jesse says, folding his arms on the table again. He’s still frowning; looks like he’s trying to work something out, or maybe figure out how to phrase something. “Can’t say as I’d know.” 

“No,” Nicky agrees. “Heard you haven’t stopped moving long enough to find out.” 

“I mean, why would I?” Jesse says, the corner of his mouth lifting into a crooked, humorless grin. “Like, come on, I ain’t that pup. Pretty sure I’m about the farthest thing from that pup a man could get. I ain’t got whatever they’re after.” 

“You are here, mijo. That’s more than anybody ever hoped for where you’re concerned.” 

Reaching out is what Nicky does with his own pups, always, but he learned how with Jesse first. He catches him on the shoulder and gives him a little “snap out of it” shake. He knows it’s a risk, the boy, young man really—hadn’t he been in fucking prison at the same age—is so different from what he remembers, but he sulks the same.

“I know I speak for all us, Jessito. We just wanna know you.” 

Jesse’s shoulder goes soft under his hand, just for a moment, then right back to the previous tension. He doesn’t shrug or move away, though, and he’s still wearing that humorless grin. 

“All you’re gonna find out is I ain’t anything like them,” he says. “And I could tell you that right now.” 

“You’re kinda an asshole so you and Gabí already got that in common.”

Jesse laughs, short and startled, and shakes his head. He keeps that tension in his shoulders. 

“I’m pretty sure we’re real different kinds of asshole,” he says, fingers drumming restlessly on the table. “We already don’t get along.” 

“Have you given him a chance? Or you tell him to get fucked? Cuz ya know, that was your mama’s attitude to this needy-ass gringo Alpha who wanted to mate him up right for awhile too. You know, ‘til it wasn’t anymore.” 

“‘Course I told him to get fucked, I thought he was fucking crazy,” Jesse says. “Don’t mean he ain’t still at eleven when I ain’t even prepared to handle a four.” 

That’s fair. His boy can be a rough fucking ride. 

But see, for Gabriel? There’s Jesse, Jack, and then there’s the rest of the fucking world.

He pinches his nose and tries to figure out how to say that. He’s just an asshole. All he’s got is the wisdom he’s picked up from Alé and Rafi. “Claro, pero nothing changes if nothing changes, verdad?” 

"Morrison said they'd leave me alone," Jesse says, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms across his chest uncomfortably. He isn't looking at him anymore, seemingly fascinated by the far corner of the room. "If I wanted." 

“Have they?”

"So far." Jesse jogs his leg distractedly, then catches himself and stills it. "Ain't seen hide nor hair of 'em since the other day." 

“Well okay then.” He refills his drink and toasts him. “There you go.”

"Yeah." Jesse looks bothered, still. "Can't say I know what to do about that." 

“I start with what I want and go from there. Oye, maybe I’m the wrong one to ask, no? What I want gets me into trouble half the time. More than half.” He laughs and Jesse smiles a little, strained though it may be. 

"Sounds like a familiar experience," Jesse drawls, thumping the foot with the ankle monitor against the floor once. "At least, more familiar than joining the army and saving the world." 

“You don’t want the outlaw life. It’s no good.”

"Ain't equipped for much else," Jesse says. 

“Ya think that then you should really talk to your mama before you decide.” Nicky taps an arm where his first gang tatt sits only half covered by his shirt. “He knows more than you think. Ask him about why he went Army.” 

"I cannot imagine asking that man a personal question," Jesse says, frowning briefly. "He was a banger? Really?" 

“Still is. So’s everyone else on this base. He’s not a Suren 'cuz tu abuela had a come to Jesus with him and he decided to pick a gang with a better winning streak, health insurance, and more,” Nicky clicks his tongue and tries to remember how Alé had put it, “Retirement options.” 

He still feels a little bad about getting Gabí that gun but if he were back there, even knowing what he knows now, he’d do it again. He’s never seen fear like his hermano’s O status going from theoretical to literal and if a gun took that terror out of his eye? Yeah, Nicky would arm him to the teeth. He’d have gotten Jael strapped too if she were willing. No one was going to touch their boy if he didn’t want it—and that was when Nicky had still wanted to be the one to sink his teeth in. He doesn’t know what it was like for Jesse but he suspects he didn’t have a litter or anything like it ready to ride or die for him. 

Los Surenos filled the gaps his own O littermates left when his mom took off with them and left him with his loser sire and uncles so he can get that. But Overwatch can too and like Ale always said about the Army, it’s a legal fucking gang. 

“They’re still gonna give you a gun and you get to use it. That’s half the reason right there, eh?”

"They won't let me _smoke_ and you think they'd trust me near a gun," Jesse says skeptically. "Reyes made me use a damn paintball gun for the tests they had me do." 

“Look me in the eye and tell me you never been on probation before. I gotta see who you lie like.”

"I lie like nobody else, thank you very much," Jesse says. 

“Ok, got it.” Kid lies like Jack, funny enough, like he believes what he’s saying. That’s a million times more dangerous than anything a Reyes ever said or did. Fuck. 

"If I actually joined up, it'd be out of boredom," Jesse says, crossing his legs as he leans back in his seat. "Ain't shit to do here." 

“Kid, they do literally everything. They’re in motherfucking space. You’re a juvenile delinquent who’s biting the hands trying to feed you.” Jesse was smart when he was small, he cannot have just become dumb as a box of rocks. Can he? Nicky leans in and speaks slowly and clearly so that he can be understood through what he is aware is a bit of an accent. “Of course you’re not allowed to do anything cool. Yet.” 

"Yeah, it's the 'yet' that's driving me up the wall here," Jesse says. "And it's a lot nicer than most anyplace else I've been locked up but I ain't any less locked up." 

“You were a brown kid running guns so large that Blackwatch noticed. From one to another, you are so much less fucking locked up it ain’t even fucking funny. They’re gonna let you leave but trust me, it ain’t the same.” 

“Fair enough,” Jesse says with a sigh, rolling his head on his neck and frowning to himself. “But considering everything else, can’t see as they’d even _want_ me to join up, even if I wanted to.” 

“Can I be straight with you, Jessito?”

“Sure, why not,” Jesse says, leaning forward to rest his chin in his hand again, expression lazy but attentive. 

Nicky mirrors him. “La verdad es esto. You do what you need to do, Uncle Nicky’s got your back, siempre, but I’m a little scared they want you so bad that if you fuck off, those two gonna say to hell with this Overwatch shit and leave the world to fend for itself trying to be what you need. ‘Cuz my boys are a lot of things but they don’t fuck up the same way twice.” 

_“Why?”_ Jesse asks with a disbelieving laugh. “Everybody keeps talking like they’d actually want me, but they ain’t _stupid_.” 

“I’m starting to think maybe you are if everybody’s telling you and you ain’t hearing them. They chose you, however, whatever, hey.” Nicky snaps his fingers at Jesse as he scoffs. “No. They did. Gabí had other options. He considered them real fucking seriously too, you feel me? It’d have been easier on them to not have a fucking anklebiter to worry about in a war. Nobody ‘cept maybe a priest woulda said shit. But he and Jack _wanted_ you. You dying didn’t undo that. Why would you growing up rough?”

“I don’t even understand why they’d have wanted me to begin with,” Jesse says, and very clearly doesn’t. He looks upset around the edges, but he’s holding it in, and his fingers are pressed tight against the table. “Why would they want me all fucked up?” 

Yeah, to be fair Nicky doesn’t get the original why either. Both his litters are heat slips with different Os. He likes their mamas okay and he’s in love with his kids but he didn’t pick that shit. He’s not like the Reyes clan, all true love bound and shit. 

“I don’t know,” he admits. “Why does anyone have pups on purpose? They were idiots in love with each other. I’d take my pups however they fucking turn out, ‘specially if I lost one of ‘em the way your parents lost you.” He sighs. “I don’t know what your life was like after we lost you, but you ever lose anyone you’d take back however you could get them?” 

“Maybe,” Jesse says, glancing away for a moment like he’s remembering something. Well—somebody, more likely. His shoulders are tense, and he’s obviously struggling for words. “I just—it don’t make _sense_. They ain’t _getting_ that pup back, they’re getting _me_.” 

“You’re the same person and we love you unconditionally. You know, without conditions.” Nicky is never going to complain about parenting his own kids again. He’s got six of ‘em and compared to this one they’re a piece of cake. 

“I really do not,” Jesse says, his mouth twisting in a painful-looking way. He doesn’t look like he believed a word of that; he doesn’t look like he knows _what_ to believe. “Nobody’s ever—” He bites the sentence in half and leans back in his seat, folding his arms and looking away. “I ain’t the same.” 

“That. Doesn’t. Matter.” 

“How the hell could it _not matter_?!” Jesse demands roughly as his eyes—Gabí’s eyes, big and pained—snap back to Nicky, shoulders drawing up tight and fingers digging in white-knuckled against his arms. “I don’t _get_ it!” 

Nicky wants to touch him but he’s afraid he’ll break. “I know you don’t, mijo. You ended up with people who didn’t love you like you deserve but that don’t mean that love don’t exist. They love you harder than your hate on yourself.”

“I _don’t_ —” Jesse cuts himself off as his voice cracks and looks horrified with himself, immediately hiding his wet-eyed face behind a hand and hunching in on himself. He’s a big kid, but he manages to look very small. Like a smaller target, maybe. “Fucking _Christ_ ,” he chokes out painfully. 

All he wants is to hug this half-grown child. He settles from putting his hand back on Jesse’s shoulder and squeezes tight. Jesse reaches up and hangs on to his arm like he’s sinking without support. “Jessito, no se preocupe. Okay? You’re alright.”

“I don’t feel alright,” Jesse manages in a voice still this close to cracking, obviously struggling to get it under control. He doesn’t lift his head or let go of Nicky’s arm. “Fucking—sorry. Sorry. I’m fine.” 

He doesn’t sound fine. 

“Don’t need to apologize. Nothing wrong with crying. I cry like a bitch on the reg.”

“Fucking liar,” Jesse sniffs wetly, digging the heel of his hand into his eye. He looks miserable, and a few tears are still slipping down his cheeks. “Please don’t tell Reyes.” 

“He’d understand. Man’s cried oceans over you this week alone. But I won’t.” 

“Thanks,” Jesse says, then drops his head and puts his face in his hands with another cracked sob. His shoulders shake with it. He’s obviously trying to pull himself together, but just as obviously isn’t getting there that easy. 

Fuck this, Nicky thinks, and tugs his godson into his arms. He cries like he did when he was little, with little gasps every now and then, and a few sniffles here and there. He learned how to hold a child with this boy and it served him well with his own pups. He can learn how to navigate a teenager too. It’s fine if he wriggles free so long as it helps a little bit. 

Jesse doesn’t pull back, though, at least not at first. He doesn’t hold onto him either, but he doesn’t pull back, and just struggles through his quiet weeping in Nicky’s arms. Eventually, though, he does start pulling himself together and straightens up awkwardly, eyes red and wet and face still damp. 

“Sorry,” he says again as he scrubs at his cheek, voice rough and raw, and also again, “Thanks.” 

“Anything. Anytime.”

Jesse scrubs at his face one more time, then laughs at himself, shaking his head. He looks upset, still, but at least a little less miserable. 

“Fuck, now I gotta walk around looking like I fucking _cried_ ,” he says with a humorless smile. 

“You can stay long as you want. I miss having you around.” 

“Thanks,” Jesse says, rubbing briefly at his eyes and still wearing that humorless smile. He’s not crying anymore, at least. “I won’t get in the way.” 

“You couldn’t.” 

“Mm.” Jesse runs a hand through his hair, his eyes falling to the floor. “Did I really make Reyes cry?”

“Oh yeah.” Nicky gives him a sad smile. “Jack too. You’re their kryptonite, niño. Dios mio, when you died, Gabi lived on my couch for weeks so his parents and Jack wouldn’t see him totally lose it over and over again. That shit was like a song on repeat. Fucking horrible but what can you say? ‘Stop crying, man, it’s not so bad?’ It was so bad. These are better. They’re only lost, not hopeless.” 

“I can’t even fucking picture that,” Jesse says, shaking his head as he folds his arms. “Either of them crying, I mean. Well—maybe Morrison. Definitely not Reyes. But they’re both so . . .” He trails off, frowning at the floor for a moment, then shakes his head again and glances back to Nicky. “I don’t know. I ain’t trying to bring up all this shit for them. Definitely don’t wanna talk to _them_ about it. And I know losing a pup’s gotta be one of the worst things somebody could feel, but they’re both so . . . you know. But Reyes still got that fucked up?” 

“You don’t gotta to talk to them about it. I mean, yeah, they’d probably pass out from the joy if you ever remember anything but you gotta understand, this never settled, not for either of them. It’s been there, awake and alive and eating at everything they did, since the day it happened. And yeah, your mama’s fucked up but that’s because things have been so bad for so long. They’re both wrecked but they don’t know how to deal with you being here when it’s the best thing that they never thought could fucking happen.” Nicky rubs his face and tries to think of what else he can say and comes up with something Jack had said when his pups were born and Gabí had been raw and desperate and Nicky hadn’t been able to wrap his head around it. “Dead’s dead. There’s no coming back from it. Not ever.” He raps his knuckles on Jesse’s arm. “Except here you are. Like a Christdamned miracle.” 

“Yeah,” Jesse says slowly, looking just past his shoulder. “They were supposed to be dead too.” 

“They’re not dead though. They didn’t give you away.” Nicky wasn’t thrown into the system but his mom gave him up and that shit hurts. He knows. A second family doesn’t erase being trashed but his pups weren’t and neither was Jesse Reyes. “Your parents are here, alive, and they’re gonna wait for you. Fucking miracles, right?” 

“Fucking miracles, alright,” Jesse says, distractedly rubbing his arm just above the Deadlock tattoo. He looks like he’s trying to wrap his head around what Nicky’s been saying but can’t quite get there, something blocking the way. “Ain’t too used to those.” 

“I hate to be the one to tell you this—” no he doesn’t, “—but you’re a Reyes. Miracles are kinda your legacy.” 

“Why _is_ it ‘Reyes’?” Jesse asks. “And not Morrison, I mean.” 

“The answer they gave most of the time is that there’s enough Morrisons already but that’s fucking bullshit. I don’t actually know. Jack don’t talk much about his people. I don’t know what the deal is there pero es cosas malo aqui. Something stinks there. You don’t throw yourself into a new family that hard if things are good in your own.” 

That’s why he’d let Rafi and Alé pretty much adopt him. Wasn’t shit for him at home but three squares and a bed. He got his love from the Reyes so he didn’t blame Jack for doing the same. 

“Ask Jack. He’s got the answers to this one. Rest of your questions too probably.” 

“It’s too many fucking questions,” Jesse says, dragging a hand down his face as his expression turns tired. “Wouldn’t even know where to fucking _start_ with ‘em.” 

“I bet you’d figure it out. He’ll help you too. He’s got an easy way about him. Kinda annoying actually.” It had taken longer than he’d wanted to admit how much he liked Jack. It had taken an embarrassingly short period to realize he loved the guy like he loved Gabí. The fucking WASPy marshmallow. 

“Yeah, he was a lot easier to talk to,” Jesse admits. “No surprise they throw him in front of all the cameras.” 

“Yeah. Good PR there. Look, you don’t have to do anything now, Jessito. You got time.” 

“Guess I do,” Jesse says with a loose shrug, resting his chin in his hand. “Can’t say as I _want_ to do anything right now. This is all . . . a lot.” 

“So don’t. It _is_ a lot. Let it marinate. Stew in it. Relax.” Nicky holds out his arms. “Pull up some couch.”

"Yeah, okay," Jesse says, glancing over to the couch. "Wouldn't hurt." 

"Definitely not," Nicky agrees, and Jesse hums non-committally and heads over to the couch. If he's susceptible to suggestion or just sick of the table or hoping to change the subject, who knows. Nicky's not particularly worried about it. Far as he's concerned, the kid can stay all night. 

Though if he does, he should probably text Gabí so he knows his pup isn't missing, just in case. He doesn't think the base would survive that one.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr!](http://suzukiblu.tumblr.com/)
> 
> and
> 
> [Tumblr!](http://dancinbutterfly.tumblr.com/)


End file.
